One of my favorite Substack writers - Anne Boyd - published a piece last week entitled, Listening to American Women Right Now. Many of her posts center around travel. While the title of her Substack is Audacious Women, Creative Lives, it could also be titled Women in the World Traveling, Sometimes for Long Periods of Time, and We Would Appreciate a Tub, Thanks.
Anne is co-leading a women’s writing retreat in Sicily right now, and her piece last week reports to us that it is made up mostly of American women. This country-specific guest list does not surprise me, and in her writing, Anne shares those women’s thoughts and fears about what is going on in the US right now. I will let you read the post - and I hope you do - but what struck me most was a comment by a Canadian woman named Karen. (Yes, I know.)
Canadian-Karen was venting her frustration with the US onto Anne by acting the bully on the playground. In her post, Anne provides a helpful suggestion for “connecting and calming down” via a breathing technique called “heart coherence breathing.” Karen shared that she was tired of all the “talking, retreating, and breathing” and because of that tiredness, not traveling here or buying our products. With a whistle around my neck and a being few heads taller than the playground general population, I stepped into the comment thread as the dual citizen of Canada and America. Freshly (and briefly) back to the Midwest from a summer spent in both Ontario and Nova Scotia, I experienced the overall sentiment that most Canadians empathize with Americans and have our backs. When I was in Halifax, a woman from Hamilton, Ontario said to me, “When you move here, we will have warm cookies and cocoa waiting for you.” That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
I think Anne’s sentiment of women retreating is profound:
Now that the retreat has begun, and we have all met each other, women from all over the U.S. as well as from the Netherlands and Dubai, my energy has been shifting from fearful and hopeless to a calmer centeredness. Connecting and opening to each other is precisely what I have missed so much in my roaming life these past three years.
There is nothing like the energy of women gathering and sharing. We naturally encourage each other and relate to each other, which is precisely the medicine that our nervous systems need.
I have a friend in Washington state who has a group of women she meets with once a month. They are called “The Bad Advice Club.” They get together and share their worries and difficulties with each other, and then troubleshoot the issues brought forth. Communing with other women to share your troubles with is a healing balm, whether you find it in a weekend or weeklong retreat, a book club, or “bad advice” club. And when it comes to solving problems, we as a gender tend to get shit done, and in a timely manner. Or as my friend Teri recently said to me, “We get the f-ing job done.”
Retreats are an intelligent and collaborative approach to wrenching our way out of ethnocentric lives. Women gathered is what changes the world.
Keep gathering. Keep traveling. Keep together.
Love & Blessings,
